


a fated fall

by Jinxter



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-21
Updated: 2017-05-21
Packaged: 2018-11-03 04:51:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10960041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jinxter/pseuds/Jinxter
Summary: "You're my ride?"The blonde smiled wider. "Uhh yeah. I'm Emma. Emma Swan."The name registered somewhere in the back of her mind, but she couldn't help but point behind the woman at the vehicle parked outside her gate. "In that yellow monstrosity?"Regina can't drive, and her ride takes her somewhere she never expected.





	a fated fall

**Author's Note:**

> Rating **will** change ;)

"What do you mean you're half way to Boston?" Regina knocked her keys to the floor in her fluster, though too preoccupied fumbling the phone in her hand to the other ear to be frustrated about it just at that moment.

_"I'm sorry, I didn't think it polite to call you at 4am but then I lost track of time driving. It's my father; the hospital called a couple of hours ago, he's had a heart attack."_

Regina stood up straight, or as straight as she could with her braced leg propped to the side. "Oh Kathryn, I'm sorry." She knew her friend's relationship with her father was somewhat distant, but the love that remained was evident in her early morning dash across state lines. "Is he...?"

_"He's alive. It's touch-and-go but they're hopeful he'll pull through."_

"Well I hope so too. Is there anything I can do?"

_"No thanks, darling. I'll give you a call later when I get there. Oh, I called David, he'll make sure you get to work."_

Regina thanked her friend through gritted her teeth, her fist balled at the thought of the meddlesome Nolans involved in her life. How Kathryn could remain on such good terms with her ex-fiancee she'd never know, especially when it meant also welcoming his new wife into her life too, the disgustingly saccharine primary school teacher. "Although if Mary-Margaret shows up in that god-awful truck of hers--"

Laughter rang down the line. _"Don't worry, she's too big now to get behind the wheel."_

She crinkled her nose at the Nolans' perfect little happy family, the child David had always wanted and Kathryn hadn't wanted to give him due just 15 months after they started dating and six after their wedding. Kathryn may be fine with it, but Regina still wasn't. Still, they were about the only people who lived further out of town than she did and still commuted in every day, so she supposed it made sense. 

In a town too small for taxis, everyone relied on friends and neighbours to help in difficult times, but Regina didn't have many friends and even fewer neighbours. She felt bad relying on Kathryn to drive all the way out to pick her up every day and drive her home, but Kathryn had never made her feel like a burden and brushed off her attempts to show gratitude. She insisted repeatedly it was simply returning the favour for when Kathryn had showed up on her doorstep with a bottle of wine and a broken heart and hadn't left for four months until her divorce was though and she'd put the down-payment on her new apartment in town.

The friends said their goodbyes and Regina spent an entire minute trying to pick up her keys off the floor, first pushing them away from the wall with the crutch she loathed and relied on, then trying to maintain her balance while doing a single-leg squat and praying her trousers remained intact.

Regina stood, her breathing more heavily than she'd like, and she leaned against the kitchen counter and gazed out over the large yard, the last snows melting and the path to the now-disused stables re-emerging. She turned away.

The doorbell rang and she slung her purse over her shoulder, then she remembered her work satchel was in her study. She hobbled as fast as she could and retrieved the bag, then grumbled as the doorbell rang again.

"David, it's unlike you to be imp--" She swung the door open to a woman who was most definitely not David.

"Hi," the woman smiled, her cheeks dimpling slightly. Long blonde hair fell down over the shoulders of a gaudy red leather jacket, and she rocked back on the heels of her brown knee-high boots and tucked her un-gloved hands into the back pockets of her overly-tight denim jeans. "David got a call-out so he asked me to swing by here on my way into town."

Regina realised her mouth was still open slightly and shut it. She licked her lips and straightened her shoulders. "You're my ride?" 

The blonde smiled wider. "Uhh yeah. I'm Emma. Emma Swan."

The name registered somewhere in the back of her mind, but she couldn't help but point behind the woman at the vehicle parked outside her gate. "In that yellow monstrosity?" 

Emma chuckled. "Yes. I know, but to be honest it's cleaner than the back seat of a police cruiser, from what I remember of them anyway, so maybe it's a good thing David couldn't make it."

Her mouth fell open again. "Back seat of..."

"Well the front seat doesn't go back very far because of the grill, and with that-" she pointed to Regina's leg brace "-anyway, we should go otherwise I'm going to be late."

She reached for the heavy satchel and Regina only held onto it stubbornly for a moment before letting go of the handle and pulling the door shut behind her. She leaned on her good leg and lifted up the arm with the crutch hanging off it to lock the door, before promptly dropping the keys again.

"I got it," Emma said quickly and ducked down to retrieve them from the older woman's feet. She looked up as she rose and Regina was struck by the intensity of her green eyes. 

"Thank you," she said probably too quietly as Emma trotted down the path in front of her and climbed in through the open door and up the stairs of the large, yellow bus with STORYBROOKE PRIMARY painted in big, black letters on the side. Emma again tried to help her when she reached the door, but Regina brushed her off with a curt, "I'm fine, thank you Miss Swan." She dealt with enough stairs in her house and at work every day she wasn't going to be made to feel entirely incapable.

She sat heavily into the seat behind the driver's seat, separated by a scratched-up perspex screen, as Emma pulled the lever to shut the doors and the hydraulics hissed as the brakes released.

"Hi," came a young voice from the front seat across the aisle. A young boy sat in the shadows of the early spring morning, his brown hair a little too long and messy, his coat a little too big for him. He slid away from the window, closer to Regina. "You're the mayor?"

"Yes I am," she replied, "and you are...?"

"Henry," he gave her a gap-toothed smile and extended his hand.

She felt herself smiling back, and shook his hand. Through her kid leather gloves she could feel how cold his fingers were. "That's a good name you have there. My father's name was Henry."

"Was?" His large hazel eyes were glued to her intently.

"He's no longer with us," Regina said, and broke eye contact to look out the window on which rain had started to spatter. "Where are your mittens? Your hands are cold."

Henry dug his hand into his oversized coat and pulled out a pair of gawdily knitted mittens. "But I can't turn the page with them on," he explained, and she noticed the large, leather-bound book that took up the seat next to him.

"What is your book about," she asked him.

He lifted it onto his lap and stroked the cover lovingly, his fingers tracing over the gilded letters. "It's fairy-tales, but not like normal fairy-tales. Red Riding Hood is my favourite one so far. She's the wolf! She's a werewolf! But I haven't read them all yet."

"You will have by the end of the week if you keep going at that rate, Hen," Emma piped up from the driver's seat. She pulled the bus over to the kerb and two children, a boy and a girl, clambered aboard. Regina squeezed herself into the row and pulls her braced leg as far as she could out of the aisle, not trusting clumsy children.

"Hi Ava, hi Nick," Henry greeted the newcomers. Neither of them replied but the boy raised his hand to wave but follows the girl to the back of the bus without a word, and Regina watched Henry's resigned expression as his eyes followed them.

"Well, your book sounds very interesting, Henry," she said warmly, and managed to coax a small smile out of him.

The bus stopped again further up after they made a turn onto the main road into town, and a repeat of the Ava and Nick incident occurred, only this time it was Paige passing down the aisle as though the two front passengers didn't exist. The giggling from the back didn't let them forget the back passengers existed, though.

"Hey Hen, tell Regina about some of the other stories you've got there."

The boy looked over at her and his fingers curled around the book a little more tightly. "Which one do you think I would like?"

He studied her for a moment. "I don't know you, I don't know what you'd like." He tips the book on edge and holds it against his chest like a warrior's breastplate. "There's one about Captain Hook." He saw her nose scrunch up. "No, no, it's not the normal story. The Captain is the ex-wife of Rumplestiltskin. She ran away from him when he got his power and became a bully, and he keeps chasing her and trying all these magic things to get her back but she's too clever for him and always gets away."

Regina raised an eyebrow. "Okay, that does sound pretty good."

The boy grinned widely. "What's your favourite book?"

She thought for a moment then glared through the screen at the back of the blonde head when she heard a murmured 'Mills and Boon?' and a chuckle. She tried to think past the psychological thrillers she mostly read, the occasional romance novel she would never admit to, especially, now, to the blonde, to her favourite books from when she was Henry's age. "Well there is one, have you heard of 'Bow Down, Shadrach'?"

Shaggy hair swung as the boy shook his head. "What's that?"

They pause as more children run up the aisle to the back of the bus.

"It's about a girl and her horse who she loves very much. It's very sad." She felt a tightening in her chest just thinking about the story she hadn't read in over twenty years.

Henry tilted his head to the side. "Why do you like it if it's so sad?"

Regina bit her bottom lip. "Sometimes sad stories help you to let out sadness rather than keep it inside."

He studied her face until she had to turn away, but in doing so she caught green eyes looking at her in the rear-facing mirror. She looked out the wet glass as they crested the last hill, the town appearing in front of them down below. Unfortunately for Regina, they didn't proceed straight into it, but rather zig-zagged around collecting more and more insolent children. 

The final stop before reaching the school was Regina's. She patted Henry on the arm as she exited, and again shooed off assistance from Emma. "I am quite capable of--" she said, before the shoe of the crutch slipped on the wet stair and Emma caught her under the arm to stop her from falling. She brushed herself off and walked away, embarrassed.

"Bye Madam Mayor," she called out. "Same time tomorrow?"

Regina scowled over her shoulder and disappeared into the building as the large, yellow bus drove away.


End file.
